James Bond: Trial by Fire
by crocious
Summary: Two years after her promotion to 007 status, James Bond uncovers a massive terrorist threat. As she begins to unravel the plot inch by inch, she discovers the ghosts from her past that haunt her and MI6, and the insidious force at the center of the web may well be the one she thought she buried with 106. The true test of loyalty is a trial by fire.
1. Prologue

**Hey, all! So, as I'm recovering from open heart surgery, and as all the blood tests confirm my last thyroid cancer treatment was unsuccessful, and as I've spent the last 3+ years in unknowingly in the throes of advanced stage Graves' disease before my thyroidectomy, I'm gonna go ahead and ask for forgiveness for being absent so long (and so crappy as well, rereading my toxicosis-fueled stories is nothing short of torture and I may well delete or edit the hell out of them.) The good news is I'm getting better. The better news is I'm writing again, though I'm jumping around on genre and fandom a wee bit.**

 **The foundation of this Bondverse is the theory that James Bond is the assigned codename for 007 in MI6, which is why the movies are rebooted with a new time period and face every few years. It will be rated M, not for porn (I've learned my lesson, promise!), but for mature elements like sexual assault and violence. Reader discretion is encouraged, but I'm doing my best to be tasteful.**

 **Don't forget to follow and review!**

 **-Cro**

 **Prologue**

 **Five Years Ago**

The night Operation 46R was executed was a disaster from the start, though you won't find that in any of the blacked out files. Agent 106, Codename _Alice Walker_ , had been brought onto what ought to have been a solo mission for two purposes: one, for tactical training under the legendary 007; two, to keep the legendary 007 from drinking, as was his legendary wont. On both counts, 106 failed, though you won't find that in the files either.

Regardless of MI6's official account, on the evening of September 23rd, 2014, Alice Walker and James Bond drove to one of the richest casinos in Malta in a white Jaguar that cost the British government something in the realm of several million pounds; really, it was less Jaguar and more Q by the time the MI6 quartermaster had finished with it, or it would have been substantially cheaper and less devastating to the organization come the wee hours of September 24th. Conversation proved impossible to initiate between the two, as one was prone to long, brooding silences, and the other to emulating her idol. The latter had read the case file as thoroughly as was possible- a minor royal of an undisclosed nation had been kidnapped by suspected human traffickers and tracked a week later to the aforementioned casino in Malta- and the former knew his job as thoroughly as was possible. Rather than pool their resources, therefore, the two remained silently confident in their success. The sky was clear and rapidly fading to purple.

The disaster came as the doors to the casino opened on the lively floor. 106 would later report feeling taken aback by the sheer glamour of it all; each man wore a crisply tailored suit of some rich fabric or other, each woman stood glittering and resplendent in her colorful gown, and it was 106's first experience blending into such a beautiful crowd. She was unprepared for 007's first instruction.

"Sloe Night."

"Do you really think so?" Walker asked. Every table was occupied and deep in animated conversation; it seemed to her to be quite a busy night indeed.

"It's the house specialty," Bond clarified. "Sloe gin and God knows what else. Order one for yourself as well, Olivier is keeping bar tonight and it's not to be missed."

Walker uncomfortably followed Bond's eyes toward the bar. Even the barflies were of a higher class than she'd ever seen, silk shirts barely wrinkled, blue eyes barely glazed. "Mr. Bond," she said. "Shouldn't we focus on...?"

But he had disappeared, melted into some roulette table or another.

Had she been properly trained, 106 might have known the proper response to this behaviour. But whether purposefully or incidentally, 007 neglected the part of her training that involved reining him in, and she was at a loss. She was, however, properly trained in surveillance, so that is the position she adopted.

She strolled up to the bar, swinging her head in perfect time with her hips, trying to find faces that matched those she'd seen in the case file or, failing that, Agent 007. But the crowd was largely beardless, and James Bond had far more experience disappearing than she had finding invisible men. Her next recourse, therefore, was to chat up the bartender- a goal that would ultimately prove much simpler than leashing her idol, if only because his eyes hadn't left her body a moment since the casino doors opened to 007 and herself. That isn't in the file either.

Walker gracefully alighted an empty stool and flashed the bartender a winning smile, which he returned in kind.

"Sloe Night?" she asked uncertainly, not relishing the idea of handing James Bond a drink against M's explicit instructions.

The bartender laughed, his voice only lightly colored with a lilting Algerian accent. "For a Tuesday, I suppose it is! Bit of a relief after this weekend, if I'm being honest."

This struck Walker as odd, given Bond's account. "Oh?" she prodded with a grin. "Was there some Maltese holiday I'm unaware of?"

"Only Independence Day," Olivier shrugged, and Walker might have felt chastised had he not so obviously cared so little himself. "You are British, no? Your accent is beautiful."

"That's sweet," Walker answered, chancing a coy giggle to gauge the bartender. His chest puffed ever so slightly, and she decided to flirt for information. That, you'll easily find in the file.

"Where is that fellow you came in with?" Olivier asked pointedly. "The tall one, with the white suit."

Walker rolled her eyes. "I wish I knew," she said, playing the part of neglected lover. "Finding the table with the worst odds, I'm sure. That one has the rottenest luck in Malta."

"Surely not," Olivier said. "He had the good fortune of arriving with such a creature as yourself."

"Flatterer," 106 grinned. She subtly shifted her shoulders to expose more of her cleavage. The bartender responded positively and poured her an expensive double scotch on the rocks.

"Mind reader," 106 amended, raising her glass in salute.

"The best for the most beautiful, _habibti_."

106 had been properly trained in identifying drugged drinks; when the nail polish on her flirtatiously twirling index finger turned a subtly darker shade of red in the scotch, she forced a smile and made to raise the glass to her lips. She noted the bartender's eyes narrowed. That is found in the file.

106 pretended to swallow a small amount of liquid and the bartender let out a relieved breath. Having him thus loosened, she began the interrogation.

"I get the impression," Walker said slowly, "that your weekend clientele wasn't your usual fare."

Olivier lowered his voice and leaned into Walker. "What could possibly give you that idea?"

"A woman can sense gossip," she giggled. She gauged how expectantly the bartender watched her and let her gaze lose focus according to his expectations of the drug.

"I am familiar with a woman's supernatural senses," Olivier said with a toothy smile. "In truth, no. It was quite an interesting crowd. Bad men, all. But I am sure you knew that."

Immediately, Walker stiffened. But she played coy, as she had been trained to do, and laughed, looking desperately in the bar mirror for a sign of James Bond. "I assumed! After all, it _is_ a casino. I can't imagine many saints come through here."

The bartender's lip curled up over his pink gums. "Indeed not. But perhaps one or two princesses?"

Walker froze and the bartender covered her hand with his own over her glass.

"They are quite pricy," Olivier continued menacingly, and Walker found she couldn't unfreeze a single muscle. "The princesses. Much more than ransom, you see. Ransom can only be paid once, but princesses can be sold and resold and resold, so they are a very worthy investment."

It only occurred to Walker then that bartenders don't usually wear white gloves.

"Who…" she managed to groan before the transdermal paralytic tightened her vocal cords and stuck her eyes.

The name the bartender whispered to Walker will not be found in the file.

Nor, indeed, will the next five hours.

* * *

Four and a half hours later, Alice Walker burst onto the roof of the casino with the unnamed country's minor royal girl. Walker's expensive dress was in tatters, as was her face, but her mind remained remarkably clear; adrenaline had taken control of her body.

The duchess collapsed to her knees as Walker shot their pursuer away from the door and slammed it shut, locking it.

"Up we get," Walker said sternly as she hoisted the girl to her feet by her elbow. "Plenty of time for that after we get you home."

The young duchess sobbed wordlessly and desperately afraid. Had the night gone as it was meant to, Walker would have comforted her. But James Bond was still AWOL, and all pity had to take a backseat to survival. Walker pressed a hard-won handgun into the duchess' hand and fitted herself with two more and an assault rifle she'd gotten off one of her own attackers.

"You know how to use this?"

The duchess barely nodded through her cries and Walker fitted the jewel in her purple earring into her ear.

"Q," she said, taking stock of the roof. "We are in position."

The skies remained silent, though under Walker's feet swelled the sound of half an army come to retrieve herself and the duchess.

"Q," she repeated urgently. "We are at the rendezvous point. Do you copy?"

Static answered at first, then a panicked Scottish voice. " _I copy, 106, I copy!_ "

Walker allowed herself the smallest of relieved sighs. "Q, was there not meant to be an escape vehicle waiting on top of the Dragonara?"

" _Right you are, 106. If you could be a little patient?_ "

Walker found she could not; the traffickers had reached the door to the roof and were endeavoring to bash it down as the duchess wailed in terror.

"Q, we have ten seconds."

" _Give me twenty!_ "

"Five!"

Walker pushed the young royal's head down behind the brick wall and the black ocean lay cool and placid as a mirror. The gunfire came as soon as the door splintered against some unseen foot, and stopped as abruptly.

" _Yantashir_ ," a deep, throaty voice said menacingly, and Walker froze. They were hidden, as long as she didn't shoot, as long as the duchess kept her hand glued in abject horror over her mouth, as long as the search for them continued. Q's voice soothed her nerves some, even if the things he whispered in her ear did not.

" _106, do you copy? I'm on my way, Alice, just hold tight. It's going to be alright, I'm coming._ "

Walker knew that Q was meant to be two seas away in London. This, then, was one colleague lying to comfort another before their death, a war trope Q himself had delivered impassioned dismissals upon.

Gunfire behind a turbine. Walker mentally kicked herself for choosing the most obvious hiding spot on the roof and adjusted her rifle silently. Silent sobs wracked the duchess' shoulders and Walker found herself wishing she hadn't been so very determined to move up in field status. A low level MI6 operative would be climbing into bed with her fiancé about now. Dull as that sounded in the light of day, it didn't seem too bad a trade in the dead of night with a dozen human traffickers hunting her on an ever-shrinking roof.

The footsteps plodded closer and closer. Three large men coming around her right, one on the left. She looked at the duchess and gave her commands with her hands, which the girl failed to comprehend. So she silently drew a handgun into her left hand and balanced the rifle on her right knee to point where she estimated the men to come and she waited, knowing fully well that despite her fiancé's assertions in her ear, she was never going to see the people she loved again. She adjusted her grip and listened.

A large splash interrupted and the footsteps raced away.

"They've jumped!" one voice screamed excitedly in Arabic. "Hurry, shoot the water!"

A barrage of gunfire illuminated the other side of the roof and Walker and the duchess looked at each other in amazement.

" _There_ ," Q's voice breathed. " _I've drawn their fire. The Jaguar is waiting, you'll need to climb down the south side_."

A drone, indistinguishable against the black night, hovered 50 kilograms of stolen documents lighter and Walker could have wept for joy. "Q, you bloody idiot."

" _Language, love. Quickly, now_."

Such a short drop would mean very little at Walker's best, but in her current state of cracked ribs and light concussion, she opted instead to grab the duchess by the waist and rappel them both down the side using a ten-foot section of rope left on the roof by construction.

The Jaguar was indeed idling at the bottom, along with a face that filled Walker with equal parts fury and relief.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded of Q, who had the decency to look sheepish.

"Long story," he said as he moved to the passenger's seat. "We haven't got the time. Shall we?"

Walker shoved the duchess somewhat more forcefully than was necessary into the backseat and climbed to the driver's side. "We need to extract 007."

Q clicked his tongue. "Don't worry about Bond, he's safe."

Given the previous five hours, this was the worst news possible in Walker's mind. She pealed angrily away and heard gunshots hit the road behind them.

"Or we could be discreet," Q snarked in annoyance.

"Discretion is no longer an option," Walker growled. "Where's the extraction point?"

A stray bullet shattered the rear window and the duchess shrieked.

"A sea plane in the marina," Q said.

" _Which_ marina?"

"That one, _that one_ \- slow down, Alice, you missed it!"

The other cars on the road blared their horns as Walker pulled a squealing 180, directly into oncoming traffic. From an encroaching black SUV came a shower of bullets that ricocheted off the white Jag, and it was toward this car that Walker pointed her own.

"Jesus, Alice! What the bloody hell are you doing?!"

"Language!" Walker shouted. The cars raced toward each other and Alice pressed a button on the console that unleashed a torrent of oil on either side of her car. The guns mounted on the Jag's roof blew out the SUV's windshield and driver, but the gunfire only grew more vigorous and desperate.

"You can't play chicken with a dead driver!"

"Shut up and unbuckle, for God's sake!"

The duchess wailed wordlessly.

The rest of the cars on the road had wisely pulled over or sped away, so it was only the Jaguar and the SUV speeding and shooting toward one another. Q and the duchess screamed; Walker gripped the steering wheel tightly. At the very last possible moment, she turned toward the ocean, clipping the other vehicle with the rear of the Jaguar. They both spun wildly, but the oiled roads proved impossible for the SUV to find purchase on, and a well-lobbed grenade out the driver's window made short work of the entire gory scene, though the force of the blast threw the formerly beautiful white car thirty feet into the marina.

The two MI6 agents and the undisclosed royal were quite capable swimmers indeed, and the water was warm and gentle. By the time the second SUV came to find the wreckage of their comrades and of the Jaguar, the three were breathing quietly under a dock; by the time the second SUV fled the scene, they were buckling into the sea plane; by the time the authorities arrived, they were a mile out to sea and taking off.

Officially, the mission was an unqualified success. The duchess was dropped off near an Italian embassy with the promise to never speak of her rescue to anyone, but instead to spearhead efforts in her nation to wipe out the Daesh threat, which she has done with a fury and gusto unmatched. The Jaguar had been rendered impossible to identify or trace by the explosion and the self-destruct sequence Q remotely activated. Agent 007, who had himself been rescued by Q two hours into the night after an old flame ruined his cover, managed to salvage several incriminating documents from Q's drone, helping to build the case against Olivier and the owners of the Dragonara; half a dozen trafficked girls, some quite high profile, have since been rescued with the information they won that night. 106 has been promoted several times solely on the strength of that mission.

Unofficially, Walker clutched Q's hand so fiercely that night he thought it might break. Unofficially, after dropping off the duchess, Walker pulled to the side of the road and stared for fifteen minutes at the blood under her nails, the long, deep scratches in her thighs. Unofficially, she flinched for months whenever her fiancé touched her too suddenly. Unofficially, he felt as helpless as she did. Unofficially, both Walker and Q saw a psychologist for years, with M's cautious permission, and unofficially, it helped. Unofficially, Q gained permission from M to take the long way home that night, just so he could drive Walker around Tuscany, and pretend to get lost in wine country for an entire day, and make her laugh, and propose all over again.

Unofficially, Walker still has nightmares.

Unofficially, she never trusted James Bond again.


	2. Chapter 1

**I intended to wait until Monday to post the first chapter, but you know me- I hate leaving dangling prologues. So here's the first chapter, five years after the previous, wherein 106 has replaced the previous 007 (and M has also replaced the previous.)**

 **-Cro**

 **Chapter One**

Today

"Bond," a voice said, interrupting her musings. "Are you listening?"

James Bond looked up into M's annoyed face and quirked a smile. "Always. Do go on."

M scowled. "Then perhaps you can explain how a simple reconnaissance mission managed to wipe out an entire Belgian suburb and three key witnesses?"

The boardroom was empty but for Agent 007 and M, though the conference included four iPads with four extremely angry faces facing the both of them. Five years had changed M and Bond utterly, but those faces will remain the same come hell itself.

Bond cracked her knuckles one by one, to the discomfort of the middle left face and the silent rage of the right. "Circumstances arose. I had to improvise."

" _Boudrot was an_ asset _!_ " shouted the right face, and M clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"Boudrot was taking money from the wrong people," Bond asserted coolly. "He was trying to play both sides. If you'll _read_ the briefing, sir, you'll find he was responsible for what happened to 022 in Trieste."

" _What happened in Trieste was unfortunate,_ " said the left face.

"What happened in Trieste was a _catastrophe_ ," M corrected sharply. "Agent 022 was one of our best and her loss was a serious blow to this agency."

The left face colored, to Bond's pleasure, but persisted. " _Be that as it may, Boudrot knew things. Things that could have helped us._ "

"And lots of things that could have brought us to our knees," Bond said. "An unreliable asset is worse than a reliable liability. Boudrot sold out Agent 022 and phone records show he always called the same Swiss number after every single MI6 meeting."

" _That's not in our intelligence reports_ ," said the center right face nervously.

Bond calmly sipped her coffee and M pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "It took some time, but I managed to de-encrypt his communications records using the data I stole from his cell phone. Q is currently hard at work tracing the Swiss number, but given his pattern, I judged it likely that Boudrot was selling MI6 information and I acted accordingly."

"Without consulting your agency?" M glared.

" _Without making absolutely certain that he was a traitor?_ "

"Without a single civilian casualty," James Bond retorted. "I'd evacuated the neighborhood the night before without tipping off the mafia and I left the local PD enough evidence to put away the bosses for life. It's impossible to implicate MI6 now that Boudrot is dead, though I retrieved all of his financial records, which will lead us directly to whomever has been buying our agents' lives. I'd call that a productive Wednesday."

The faces on the screens fumed silently, though M covered a slight smile behind his coffee mug.

Bond let the silence hang for a moment before standing up and straightening her tie. "Now then. If that will be all?"

"Dismissed," M confirmed, and James Bond excused herself to let him convince the faces on the screens that last night's mission had been an unqualified success, that 007 had acted solely in the interest of MI6 and the Crown. That was his job.

Hers involved more legwork.

Bond walked quickly and opened her email before M could call her back into his office for further admonishment. Six cases awaited her review; in the elevator, she determined two were not worth her time and a third relied entirely on unreliable information and poor translations; M ought to have known better than to recommend her for that.

She scanned an APB from an Arab princess, formerly a young duchess, as her feet carried her almost automatically to the quartermaster's lair, six stories below the innocuous office building. Q was half-buried in the hood of a car, swearing quietly at whatever he was wrestling with and Bond cleared her throat.

Q's head popped up over the Jaguar's hood, cheerful, chubby and covered in oil.

"Bond!" Q said in a sweet Irish brogue. "Could you hand me that monkey wrench? I'm afraid to let go this bolt!"

James Bond put her jacket on a relatively uncluttered stool and rolled up her sleeves. "What are we looking at?" she asked as she handed Q the wrench.

"Damnedest bloody thing," Q grunted. The bolt refused to budge under his efforts. "Thought I'd give this old thing an once-over, you know? But the oil slicker exploded in my face and wouldn't stop! Can't figure out how to turn it... oh, thank you so much!"

Bond tweaked a valve on the other side of the engine and the bolt under Q's wrench gave way.

"The canister is pressurized." Bond wiped her hands on a relatively clean flannel and Q followed her to the computer hub.

"You're not kidding!"

Bond nodded toward a screen. "Any news for me, Q?"

The little blond man rubbed his face with the inside of his shirt, smearing black around his amicable cheeks. "Some. The number you recovered was a burner."

"Of course," Bond sighed.

" _But!_ I traced each call to its rough coordinates in Germany!"

"Germany?"

"Berlin. It wasn't easy, but the calls were definitely sent to a Swiss burner in Berlin."

Bond braced herself on a desk. "Can we cross reference the locations and times with CCTV footage, at least?"

"Way ahead of you," Q grinned. He tapped the keys musically and the screens flooded with dozens of black and white videos of Berlin streets.

"Seems simple enough," Bond said. "How many faces can that possibly be? Ten thousand? A hundred?"

"3.5 million," Q said, undaunted. "Give or take."

"It couldn't possibly be simpler."

Q opened a tablet that cycled through faces faster than Bond's eyes could follow. "And of course, these are only the public places. But it's a start, at least. I'm cross-referencing the faces visible on the streets within ten minutes of each of the call times. The recipient will be one of them if they've been taking the calls away from their BoO."

"Likely." Bond nodded in approval. "Justinia never took any calls in her hideout. She said she didn't want to be traced to her apartment."

"Exactly! So even if terrorists don't all think the same way, it's as good a place as any to start."

"How many people are in the list?"

At that, Q puffed out his cheeks in exasperation. "So far? Close to six thousand."

Bond sighed and straightened. "How long until we have something reliable?"

"Give me another six hours," Q said. "Give or take."

Though he had been gone for three years, this so reminded Bond of the former quartermaster that she smiled fondly. "How long have you been at it?" she asked with concern.

Q shrugged. "Burnin' the midnight oil, I suppose. 009 needed some new toys for Seoul and M had me program a few new antiviruses for the system. Been here since last night."

"Good God, Q, when do you sleep?"

"Never on the firm's time, Miss."

Bond frowned. "Go home," she said sternly. "There's nothing needs doing that can't be done on a full night's sleep."

Q puffed out his chest. "If you'll forgive me, Miss, since the downsize there's quite a lot on my plate. The department plays a vital role."

"Right now, your department is just you," Bond answered. "And you're just a man. Men need sleep."

"But-"

"If M wants the work of three people done," Bond said impatiently, "he can hire two more people. Go home and rest. I'll deal with the firm."

Q chewed his lip anxiously and Bond wondered what about the quartermaster position at MI6 attracted people so devoted to work that they'd sacrifice any amount of sleep and health to satisfy the firm. Perhaps the promotion came with a steady supply of amphetamines, or perhaps those with a healthy work ethic are weeded out in the interview process. Qs, in Bond's experience, are uniformly manic, obsessive and devastatingly brilliant, if eccentric, and she'd be damned if the demands of the job robbed another lover of their fiancé, another mother of her son, another friend of their best friend.

"It's September," Bond said as sternly as she could manage. "The weather won't be this beautiful for very much longer. Have yourself a day off, and call that bloke who's been texting you since I got here. Let him buy you a beer."

The gentle sounds of a vibrating phone under a pile of loose papers turned Q's oil-smeared cheeks pink. "I suppose I could stand to have a walk."

"And a full night's sleep."

"And it _has_ mostly been busywork since midnight…"

Bond sat herself in an ergonomic computer chair next to Q. "I'm between cases anyway. If any other busywork comes through, I'll handle it."

"Oh!" Q exclaimed. "That's right! I forgot you were engaged to the other-"

Bond's scowl effectively froze the words in Q's throat and he coughed. "That is…that you're familiar with the job."

"Quite so," Bond said slowly.

"Well…if you're sure?"

"Quite indeed."

Q grinned a wide, infectious grin and Bond felt the corners of her lips curl up. "Thank you, Bond! I owe you!"

"Hurry now," Bond chided. "Before something comes up and you get stuck here."

After Q's musical gait died away down the hall, Bond turned back to her emails, watching out the corner of her eye the faces of Berlin flash through the computer screens.


End file.
